Spotlight strikes again [via Dibo at stoush.net]:
Workers at the new Spotlight store in Mount Druitt are being offered pay and conditions worse than those available to their counterparts in Coffs Harbour.
They are being offered an Australian workplace agreement that does not include the two cents an hour pay rise offered to the Coffs Harbour workers in return for surrendering award entitlements, such as penalty rates, overtime and leave loading. An agreement offered to a part-time worker at Mount Druitt also guarantees only four hours’ work a week.
The equivalent NSW award guarantees a minimum of 12 hours a week for part-timers.
The agreement provides no guaranteed pay rise, saying “your wage rate will be reviewed annually and any increase in rate shall remain at the sole discretion of Spotlight�. Non-salaried employees may be required to work “reasonable� additional hours and on public holidays but there would be no overtime or penalty rates: “Additional hours will be paid at your base rate of pay.�
The response from Andrews again is the lame one that the workers would otherwise be on the dole, but as Dibo points out, the store must have been in the planning stages before WorkChoices and surely would have opened anyway if it had to pay employees under the state award. It really is quite useless for the Government to point out that miners on AWAs are getting 90k a year or whatever, when the people who are being totally screwed by AWAs are much more often non-miners living in outer suburban or regional seats Government members hold. The Unions are addressing this via databases broken down by electorate, and they’re phoning people and door knocking. Away from the tv ads, the grassroots campaign is incredibly well organised and targetted. I’d hate to be a Liberal or National member who has to repeat Andrews’ specious rubbish to his or her constituents.
Elsewhere: More commentary on IR from Tim at Road to Surfdom.
The Howard Government’s lame response to criticisms is encapsulated by their paranoid response to Combet’s tongue in cheek comments about Union power. The Unions are not making a push for greater power… but rather trying to regain the territory that working Australia has lost since last July. Furthermore, if Unions do happen to come out of this struggle more powerful than before, Howard will have no-one to blame but himself.
It would seem that within the Spotlight organisation itself there is an internal race to the bottom.
Well, these “experts” on running businesses can certainly teach the rest of the World how to wreck productivity, bring on shortages, destroy the commitment of workers, send businesses broke, drive UP wages (the inevitable next crisis), cause inflation and impoverish share-holders in the shortest possible time. Never mind the real world, their fantastic ideology can bring about tremendous economic changes ….my oath they can! …. with an INVERTED J-Curve.
Mind you, the government might try to rescue their befuddled corporate pals with new strict employment laws, similar to those in Eastern Europe a few decades ago, to stop the haemorrhage of good workers from bad – and failing – firms …. but that would only make the situation worse.
Poor Mr Andrews, his place in History is assured ….. but I don’t think he’ll like it.
As I understand it, Andrews has already decided not to run at the next election.
Can anyone confirm or deny?
If true, he can save a significant sum on hair dye.
Why do they bother?
Haven’t seen that mentioned, wpd.
Great post, Mark.
Cheers, weathergirl.
Just on these AWAs in the mining industry, there was an interesting article by Tony Maher of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union in the AFR of 29 June.
He says that the average annual productivity increases of 4.7 per cent for 1985 to 2003 in the mining industry are largely on the back of the coal mining sector which is largely regulated by collective agreements and an estimated 85 per cent union membership density. Productivity growth here exceeded 90 per cent in the ten years up to 2003.
Wages in the AWA-dominated metal-mining sector are about 75 per cent of those in the unionised coal sector. They often have to work 14 12-hour shifts in a row. Unsurprisingly there is a crisis in labour turnover.
Still in the glorious future ‘planned’ by our fearless leaders we may have Chinese workers in Chinese owned mines. In the AFR today it is reported that the Chinese want to have the right to bring in unskilled labour to work on our ports and construction sites.
Interesting, Brian. Is there a source for the data Maher uses?
Brian Bahnisch:
It’s not just what might have been Australian jobs going to the Chinese …. there might be even more “interesting” things in the pipeline for us.
A bit of Chinese for you: “mai” = to sell; “guo” = nation; “zei” = thief ….so “maiguozei” = traitor; a thief who sells out his country …. I wonder how freely the Chinese use that term among themselves when chatting, with contempt, about the pompous Australian corporate and government high-flyers who have flogged-off Australian recources, productive assets and jobs for a song?
Mark, no, unfortuntely. I’ve reported it using where possible the words he used (I clipped the article.)
Graham, the Chinese I think want to control the supply chain as much as possible and have shown they are prepared to move in where others may pull out because of political reasons in South America, for example.
Also they have to do something with their giant balance of payments surplus and would want to diversify out of buying US bonds.
Brian Bahnisch:
Another Chinese aspect is the hostile attitudes of many recent Overseas Chinese immigrants towards Australian trade unions, awards, working conditions, etc. Much of this hostility comes from misunderstandings of, or insufficient reliable information about, Australian social history. Given their prestige and their influence in the upper echelons of Australian society, it is hardly surprising that the views of many of them on industrial relations coincide with the types favoured by Howard, Andrews and their pals.
When it comes to industrial relations, firms coming into Australia from from the Peoples’Republic of China are far more likely to be influenced by fellow Chinese already living here than by trade unionists or social justice activists.
Just because the management staff of a firm from the P.R.C. are members of the Communist Party, don’t expect too much solidarity with the struggling workers here.
I’m impressed! Things must be improving.
I posted on this thread over 24 hours ago and not once have I been threatened or slandered. Elsewhere previously, if I had said anything even slightly critical of migrants, Overseas Chinese, I would have copped a torrent of hysterical abuse from overenthusiastic do-gooders, wild claims that I was a “racist red-neck” and much worse.
Now, back to business. The government has, for whatever reasons, opened the doors wide to the Chinese. There are all sorts of reasons why chances of native-born Australians building careers with them under traditional Australian working conditions is not quite as good as is sometimes supposed. So, if we want to see native-born Australians in such employment under equitable conditions then it is essential, first, that Overseas Chinese migrants, who are so influential, be targetted with a well thought out campaign of accurate and balanced information on certain aspects of Australian social history. For instance: condemning the White Australia Policy is one the thing; but telling outright lies about it and omitting to mention vital aspects of it only stirs up racism and loathing against today’s native-born Australians; much the same thing goes for the 8 Hour Day campaign, the Eureka Stockade, the 1871 education laws, workers’ compensation, equal pay and a similar neglected parts of Australian social history.
Whatever is written in such a campaign must be of a literary standard in both simplified characters (PRC and Singapore) and in traditional characters (HongKong, Taiwan and young PRC intellectuals); whatever is broadcast must be in polished standard Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghaiese, Hokkien and Taiwanese – even though “dialect” is out of favour these days.